1514-1564
Anatomist

Influence. Andreas Vesalius is best known today as the founder of modern medical anatomy, on account of his technique, his challenge to receive ideas about the structure of the human body, and his innovative design for an anatomical textbook. His volume initiated a revolution in how anatomy was taught in the late-Renaissance and early-modern curriculum. Yet, if one can place him among the pioneers of modern anatomy, he is perhaps better regarded as the last and best of the ancient anatomists and taken as a measure of the success of medical humanism in sixteenth- century Europe.

Education. Vesalius was born in Brussels, Belgium, which was then a part of the Holy Roman Empire. His father was an apothecary in service to the emperor, Charles V. Vesalius mastered Latin in Brussels and then enrolled at the University of Louvain in 1530, where he must have made...